Zero Tolerance by Claudia Mills (review)

If a seventh-grader were ever to be named "least likely to cause trouble," it would be Sierra Shepard, good student, class leader, and responsible choir member. When she finds that she's accidentally brought her mother's lunch, which includes a fruit knife, she therefore does the right thing and turns the knife in—which, because of the school's zero tolerance policy on weapons, means expulsion. Sierra's sentenced to in-school suspension while she waits for an appeals hearing to deliver a verdict and while her enraged father (a high-powered lawyer) plans to demolish the principal behind the ruling; as she gets to know the other kids in suspension and sorts through her shame and anger at her current situation, she begins to question the people and dynamics in her life that she had previously taken for granted. Mills' skilled authorial hands turn what could be a preachy story of persecuted virtue into a nuanced examination of motivation and perspective. With her crush on a soft-spoken classmate and her distress at missing classes, Sierra is an appealing and credible straight and narrow kid, a characterization that gets interestingly complicated when she begins to grow close to a detention regular, Luke, and when she decides to cause some actual trouble. The book is also perceptive about the way she gets somewhat lost amid the adult conflict, as her principal and her father see the battle on their own terms while Sierra goes through an emotional and ethical journey largely unnoticed by either of them. This will make provocative discussion fodder, and it will also encourage kids to think more deeply about their relationship with rules and approval.